Napoléon (Abel Gance, 1927)

[denti alligator]

Good point. None of this clear at this point. I sorry not to be near Paris in July. Here’s hoping for a swift appearance on Blu-ray or even UHD!

[MichaelB]

Netflix has to be a dead cert.

And I did a few quick calculations and worked out that 220+205 minutes at 18fps equates to 198+166 mins at 20fps. So that's conceivably where 61 of the extra 90 minutes comes from.

[La Clé du Ciel]

does it mean that some of the extra 90 minutes includes additional footage for previously seen sequences? In other words, only a couple (?) of totally new sequences, but also significant additional "new" footage interpolated into well-known sequences.

From the few extracts I have seen, I imagine that this is the case – many familiar sequences will be slightly (or significantly) longer and there will also be some important new material. This is very much what characterized the successive Brownlow restorations from the 1970s to the 2016 BFI release. (Though there are also instances where scenes were removed or substituted rather than added/expanded.)

And I did a few quick calculations…

Me too… I think the only definitive way of comparing different restorations would be via physical length (i.e. metres), which is usually omitted from press releases and advertising. I’ve not seen a precise figure for the CF restoration, but an estimate can be made from the given length and framerate. At 18fps, the total of 425 minutes for the CF restoration would equate to c.8830m. For comparison, I believe that the latest Brownlow/BFI version is c.7540m, shown (mostly but not entirely) at 20fps. If this version were projected at 18fps, it would run to 363 minutes – i.e. about an hour short of the CF restoration.

According to Georges Mourier’s 2012 essay on the history of the film and its restorations, the edition of NAPOLEON “improperly” referred to as the “definitive version” (i.e. a reduced version of the longer Apollo version, assembled for export in November 1927) ran to 9600m. Mourier has since referred to this version as “la Grande Version”, though I’m unsure where this name comes from. Either way, it seems to be a blueprint for the CF to work from (or else, it is the version they can best approximate with the material they have). Unless they have since revised their estimate of the original length of the “Grande Version”, their final restoration still falls c.770m short – i.e. about 37 minutes (at 18fps).

I’m sure there is much yet to be said about the rationale behind the various restoration choices, including that of framerates. (Mourier’s 2012 article, for example, uses 20fps to calculate the film’s various running times. The restoration team has clearly changed their minds since then.) Given that both a book and (I believe) a documentary will be released to coincide with the release, I’m sure more answers will be given then – plus, of course, the experience of seeing the restoration in full…

[Stefan Andersson]

Cannes Classics webpage incl. downloadable press kit:
https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/na ... bel-gance/

From the press kit, a description of the French-language book to be released May 16, 2024:
"Un livre de référence NAPOLÉON VU PAR ABEL GANCE - ÉDITIONS DE LA TABLE RONDE
Ouvrage collectif – 340 illustrations - 312 pages – format 17x21 – 29 € - En librairies à partir du 16 mai.
Pour rendre hommage au travail titanesque de reconstruction du film, ce livre de référence
adopte un principe original de maquette, qui donne la primeur aux images du film et déroule
l'essentiel des sept heures de l'œuvre d'Abel Gance, depuis son carton initial jusqu'à son terme.
Avec des textes qui éclairent l'aventure du film et son histoire, et des documents d'archives
inédits."

This means the book is an hommage to the restoration, and contains:
- the essential of the film, in pictures, from main title to end
- texts re: "the adventure and history of the film"'
- unpublished archival documents

Here is a 2021 mention of Georges Mourier writing a book about the restoration:
https://www.telerama.fr/cinema/napoleon ... 869558.php

[Stefan Andersson]

New articles about the film:
https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/2024 ... storation/
-the original Apollo version ran 9.5 hours, later cut to 7 hours ("grande version", the one now restored)
-the Opéra version was 11 hours and 44 minutes
-OCN was sent to the US, never returned

https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/ ... _3246.html
Opéra version 3 hours 47 minutes
Apollo version 9 hours 40 minutes
"Grande version", 7 hour release version

[Stefan Andersson]

New French article:

https://www.cnc.fr/cinema/actualites/re ... ce_1429506

[Stefan Andersson]

Review of new French book about Napoléon, with detailed recap of various versions and lengths; we also learn that the Cinématheque Francaise has world rights to the film, and a scan of the music excerpts is included:
https://therealmofsilence.com/2024/06/0 ... aire-2024/

Other reviews:
https://www.culturopoing.com/cinema/liv ... e/20240517
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/edition/aux- ... -collectif

[low87]

Trailer/teaser for the film:

https://youtu.be/whwWyleC4b4?si=jo_2Rv14GDspLn2w

Edit: better link

[Stefan Andersson]

Articles about the music selections:
https://www.maisondelaradioetdelamusiqu ... abel-gance
https://www.lefigaro.fr/musique/napoleo ... s-20240615
https://www.resmusica.com/2024/06/15/la ... es-ecrans/
https://www.cinezik.org/infos/affinfo.p ... 0516155553

Also:
https://www.boxofficepro.fr/napoleon-da ... e-lumiere/

[low87]

New teaser from Orchestre National de France
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8pPWScI ... VsYTFvaw==

Some shots I don’t recognise from the BFI restoration…
Only one week until premiere. Even if I’m not going, I can’t wait to read the reviews from people who are familiar with the Brownlow version.

[Stefan Andersson]

From July 10, Pathé will distribute the film in 30 cinemas in France:
https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/ ... _3246.html

[Ann Harding]

The programme for tonight's screening is online here:
https://www.maisondelaradioetdelamusiqu ... 202024.pdf

[Stefan Andersson]

Reports from the July 4-5 screenings in Paris:
https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic. ... 6a#p290856

[hearthesilence]

It sounds like the BFI's set (with Brownlow's work and Davis's score) may still be the best home viewing option. And yes, having the triptych shrunken into a "letterbox" projection is underwhelming - an enormous anticlimax the one time I saw it at the George Eastman House many years ago.

[beamish14]

I wonder if any 70mm prints of the Coppola restoration still exist. It had one final screening in 2007, and I guess it could’ve been a casualty of the 2008 Universal vault fire

[MichaelB]

The score was the aspect that I was most concerned about; for me, the Coppola version shrivelled besides the Carl Davis one for that specific reason, and it sounds as though the same is true of this new one.

True, Davis had the advantage of assistance from the likes of Mozart, Bach, (especially) Beethoven et al, but he was also able to marshal their music into a completely coherent and thrillingly inventive score in its own right, that fit the film like the most immaculately-tailored glove.

Incidentally, I put together a 4K UHD version of the triptych sequence thanks to the BFI obligingly furnishing us with the three individual panels. Not quite the same thing as having the screen expand, of course, but it's still pretty impressive given all the fine detail.

[hearthesilence]

When I was still at school, I actually worked in a department in charge of multimedia equipment, including numerous flat screen hi-def TV's. (The school's library often set up multiple TV's just to display slideshows of information and we were in charge of that. They were set up on heavy-duty stands with rolling casters.) Years too early, but if I was still there, it would've been a golden opportunity to try out the triptych feature on the BFI's Blu-ray set. I'd just need to outfit the players with region-free mods.

I won't deny that Gance's Napoléon has considerable technical merit, but it always felt a bit short of being a great film to me, moreso now given my feelings about the subject matter. Nevertheless, the BFI set was the first thing I picked up when I visited the UK in 2017, and the presentation there blew me away, even if I had reservations about the film itself.

[Peacock]

I’ll always cry that the silly BFI producer who released Napoleon didn’t think to have the middle panel play on the final disc so one could create their own three projector screening! Such a half-hearted oversight. Instead when you reach the finale you need to pause and swap discs as the middle panel plays on disc 2 instead.

[pistolwink]

I won't deny that Gance's Napoléon has considerable technical merit, but it always felt a bit short of being a great film to me, moreso now given my feelings about the subject matter.

This film always seemed pretty plainly a bore to me, except for a handful of very memorable passages that are the only ones anyone talks or writes about. My sense is that the longer the film's infinite restorations get, the more true that is....

[Stefan Andersson]

Gance scholar Paul Cuff reviews the Paris screenings (July 11th post):
https://therealmofsilence.com/

Relevant quotes:

"The Cinémathèque française restoration is notable for containing about an hour of material not found in the BFI edition. The longest single section of new material comes at the start of the Toulon sequence, with Violine and Tristan witnessing civil unrest. It provides a welcome fleshing-out of their characters, which were much more present in the longer versions of the film in 1927. (Indeed, in the 1923 scenario that covered all six of Gance’s planned cycle, they were the main characters alongside Napoleon.) Not only are the scenes important for the sake of character, but they also have some superb camerawork: multiple superimpositions of Violine observing the horror, plus handheld (i.e. cuirass-mounted) shots of the scenes in the streets. Elsewhere, there were many new scenes of brief duration – together with numerous small changes across the entire film: new shots, different shots, titles in different places, new titles, cut titles."

"The alterations tend to reinforce, rather than reorient, the material evident in previous restorations. And if the montage is clarified or intensified in many places, there are others when it still feels oddly incomplete. When Napoleon sees Josephine at the Victims’ Ball, for example, the rapid montage of his previous encounters with her includes shots from several scenes that are no longer in the film. Is this a case of Gance not wishing to lose the cadence of his montage, or are there still missing scenes from the new restoration? "

"In another instance, I remain unsure if the additional material in the new restoration helps or hinders the sequence in question. I’m thinking of the end of the Double Tempest, where a new section – almost a kind of epilogue – appears after the concluding titles about Napoleon being “carried to the heights of history”. The additional shots are dominated by Napoleon in close-up, looking around him, a shot that /CF film restorer Georges/ Mourier himself explained (in a 2012 article) originally belonged in the central screen of the triptych version of the sequence. In that version, Gance’s triptych montage used the close-up of Napoleon looking around him to make it seem like he was observing the action on the two side screens. In that context, it made perfect sense. But now, in the latest restoration (which, for unstated reasons, did not attempt to reconstruct the Double Tempest triptych), the shot appears in isolation and looks a little odd. It’s still a compelling image, but it has nothing to interact with on either side, as originally intended."

"In the /printed/ programme, only the last line of credits cites a precise length for the version we are supposedly watching: “Grande Version (négatif Apollo) / 11,582m”. This length is a metric equivalent of the 38,000ft positive print that Kevin Brownlow (in 1983) records Gance sent to MGM in late 1927. (As opposed to the 9600m negative print that Mourier, in 2012, cites as being assembled for international export at the same time in 1927.) The total amount of footage in the MGM positive included the material used for all three screens of both the Double Tempest and Entry into Italy triptychs, plus (Brownlow assumes) alterative single screen material for these same sequences. The total projected length of the print is given as 29,000ft (a length of such neatness that it suggests approximation). At 18fps, this 29,000ft (8839m) would indeed equate to the 425 minutes of the Cinémathèque française restoration. But are its contents (or two-part structure) the same? There is still no information on how Mourier et al. distinguished the contents of the “Grande Version” from that of the (longer) Apollo version. (Or, indeed, how to distinguish the contents of the “Grande Version” from the contemporaneous 9600m version.) Without more clarification, I’m unsure if the figure of 11,582m in the programme notes truly represents what we are watching. Any differences between the 1927 and 2024 iterations of the “Grande Version” would not matter were it not for the fact that every single press piece and publication relating to the film insists that the two are one and the same thing."

[Stefan Andersson]

French DVD and Bluray box set at the end of 2025, from Potemkine Films:

"After 16 years of an unprecedented collective adventure in the history of La Cinémathèque française to revive this legendary film, we are very happy, in our turn, to accompany this adventure.
The French Cinémathèque and Potemkine Films are teaming up to design a DVD and Blu-ray edition to measure the size of this masterpiece.
NAPOLEON seen by Abel Gance (1927 - 420 min) "Grand Version" unreleased and definitively will be available in a collector's box at the end of 2025.
More news very soon...
Radio France
Festival Lumière (officiel)"

Taken from: https://www.facebook.com/Silentvalerio

Also:
https://store.potemkine.fr/
https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic. ... &start=120

[Peacock]

Avec sous-titres Anglais?

[tenia]

It'll be a late 2025 release, so we don't know that yet. This being written, Potemkine aren't used to have English subs on their releases.

[andyli]

The CF restoration has been broadcast in France and a recording of it has just appeared. It seems that the frame is presented with soft edges (vs. BFI's hard edges as shown below). Also, the B&W portion has a slight tint.

Exact running time: Part 1 - 3:45:00 + end credits. Part 2 - 3:20:50 + end credits.

[Peacock]

The new resto also loses some of the image in the shots above anyway. Interesting.